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Godot 4.0 will discontinue visual scripting

godotengine.org

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Re: Godot 4.0 will discontinue visual scripting

#51

Post by weinzierl »

> Godot ended up allowing a lot of its users to be a tool to learn programming instead.

This, so much. After careful deliberation I chose Godot and GDScript as a follow-up after Scratch for my kid to learn programming.

Godot and GDScript are great, because:

- Easy enough to pick up after Scratch. GDScript is easy to learn yet powerful enough to teach most relevant programming concepts and it even is able to make real world applications.

- Graphics and Sound! Nothing is more motivating for children than something that moves, blinks and makes noise. That's how I got into programming in the 80s and it still works the same - technology changed a lot but humans are still humans.

- With Godot it is easy to make a mobil app. I cannot stress enough how important that is. The primary computing device for kids today is the mobile phone. If the thing you make isn't there it doesn't exist.

- GDScript is quite similar to Python - in syntax and spirit. It will make learning Python as the next language a lot easier.

- GDScript just makes sense and is free from legacy cruft. You don't have to constantly hand-wave away things you can only explain with a lot of historical context, which children totally lack.

- Games! The only thing more fun than playing games is making your own.

- Godot is not a toy (like Scratch) but is used for real world apps! Not even games only but also serious apps with 10k+ users, like the Tesla app for example. Kids love to do serious grown-ups stuff.

Funnily, even after spending quite some time with Godot recently, this article is the first time I heard about Godot's visual scripting. If I had known about it, I might have used it to ease the transition from Scratch.

Re: Godot 4.0 will discontinue visual scripting

#52

Post by edflsafoiewq »

throw_m239339 wrote: post #50
qikInNdOutReply wrote: post #46

Visual scripting is a dead end. Much preferable would be to have a IDE to display code visually in metaphors. Like i create a input set, and then can watch the input traverse the state-pachinko machine until it comes to rest again. Make it easier to see cause and effect of a single moment, visually displayed, without loosing the underlying code and class structure.

> Visual scripting is a dead end. Tell that to the Blender team and their "everything nodes" project... When done right it allows artists and non programmers to write programs. https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/modeling/geometry_... Another popular project is animation nodes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UB8R_xPpaSc These are alternatives to Python in Blender. So no, it's not a dead end, it depends on how i…

Nodes let non-programmers access some of the power of being able to program.

It's inferior to real programming in every other way though. Writing code to generate node graphs (eg. for Blender materials) is particularly hellacious.

Re: Godot 4.0 will discontinue visual scripting

#53

Post by seanstrom »

bodge5000 wrote: post #45
snarfy wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Epic is working on verse script now. Even they realized visual scripting is not the best way to do development. It's very limiting. I was much happier with UE when it had unrealscript. I still do game development on the old engines, but I don't like doing anything with the new engines that force you into c++ or blueprints. Code is simply more expressive than flow charts.

If Unreal got proper scripting language support, I'd seriously consider giving it another go. I'd rather they go the Unity approach than the Godot approach and use a real-world language (C# is used outside Unity of course, GDScript is only used in Godot, though it does have bindings), but I'll take what I can get, clearly as I use Godot rather than Unity. As it stands, picking up blueprints feels like I have to learn…

I wonder if building a custom language is a simpler way to optimize stuff later on?

For example, Unity uses C# but then you need either all of Mono at runtime or something like IL2CPP to compile to C++. And then eventually that compiler is constantly needing to keep up with language releases and new features. Or in .Net’s case new languages like F#.

Re: Godot 4.0 will discontinue visual scripting

#54

Post by throw_m239339 »

edflsafoiewq wrote: post #52
throw_m239339 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Visual scripting is a dead end. Tell that to the Blender team and their "everything nodes" project... When done right it allows artists and non programmers to write programs. https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/modeling/geometry_... Another popular project is animation nodes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UB8R_xPpaSc These are alternatives to Python in Blender. So no, it's not a dead end, it depends on how i…

Nodes let non-programmers access some of the power of being able to program. It's inferior to real programming in every other way though. Writing code to generate node graphs (eg. for Blender materials) is particularly hellacious.

> It's inferior to real programming in every other way though. Writing code to generate node graphs (eg. for Blender materials) is particularly hellacious.

Programming is programming, there is no such thing as "real programming". Visual programming is an alternative to textual programming, we're discussing whether it's good or not, but let's not imply that visual programming is not programming, it is programming.

> Writing code to generate node graphs (eg. for Blender materials) is particularly hellacious

No, it isn't hellacious. Node based programming languages eliminates a few things non programmers don't want to deal with: syntax errors and type errors.

Re: Godot 4.0 will discontinue visual scripting

#55

Post by edflsafoiewq »

throw_m239339 wrote: post #54
edflsafoiewq wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nodes let non-programmers access some of the power of being able to program. It's inferior to real programming in every other way though. Writing code to generate node graphs (eg. for Blender materials) is particularly hellacious.

> It's inferior to real programming in every other way though. Writing code to generate node graphs (eg. for Blender materials) is particularly hellacious. Programming is programming, there is no such thing as "real programming". Visual programming is an alternative to textual programming, we're discussing whether it's good or not, but let's not imply that visual programming is not programming, it is programming. > W…

I said "writing code to generate node graphs". If you have some example of nice code for this I'd like to see it. Everything I've seen is opaque (unclear what the node graph will look like), basically write-once, and has trouble getting the placement of the nodes correct enough even to not overlap, let alone look nice.

(Also it doesn't eliminate type errors, sockets have a type after all.)

Re: Godot 4.0 will discontinue visual scripting

#56

Post by spywaregorilla »

Most people are missing the big point I think which is their point 2

> Even though the visual scripting part was good enough, Godot lacked high level components to make use of it. Engines like Unreal, Game Maker or Construct offer high level game features packaged together with the visual scripting solution. This is what makes it useful. Godot is an extremely general purpose game engine where it's easy to make those features yourself, but they don't come packaged out of the box. As such, visual scripting by itself was of little use.

This is it. what makes unreal blueprints great is that it's mostly just engine API calls. This is pleasant to do and generally helps you learn the engine in a discoverable way. Want to walk around? Character movement component. Want to play with audio? Audio component. etc. etc.

My current project is about 90/10 bp/cpp. It's not right to think of it as no code. You're going to need to think an awful lot about class inheritance, interfaces, event replication, etc. It's very much code and the swarms of noobies that want to try it without understanding code fundamentals all give up pretty quick.

Re: Godot 4.0 will discontinue visual scripting

#57

Post by bluescrn »

weinzierl wrote: post #51

> Godot ended up allowing a lot of its users to be a tool to learn programming instead. This, so much. After careful deliberation I chose Godot and GDScript as a follow-up after Scratch for my kid to learn programming. Godot and GDScript are great, because: - Easy enough to pick up after Scratch. GDScript is easy to learn yet powerful enough to teach most relevant programming concepts and it even is able to make real…

As a long-time Unity user increasingly interested in alternatives, I find the choice of a non-standard language to be very offputting, moreso than the thought of returning to the pain of C++ to work with UE.

Established languages generally have high-quality tools for debugging, refactoring, and more, as well as loads of libraries and code examples available, and books/tutorials/documentation.

IMHO, one of Unity's best moves was to focus on C# and discontinue support for their own custom language.

Re: Godot 4.0 will discontinue visual scripting

#58

Post by yardshop »

bodge5000 wrote: post #38

A little off topic, and I know it'll never happen (though it is a common, if very minor, issue people have with Godot), but in that header image it looks like they accidentally found a better logo for Godot. It's still got the classic shape, and the centre circle looks less like the centre of a cog and more like an eye, but its also a lot cleaner than we've currently got. Anyway, back on topic, yeh I think this is fo…

That center circle is actually the sun approaching the horizon, because they are "sunsetting" Visual Scripting.

Re: Godot 4.0 will discontinue visual scripting

#59

Post by cercatrova »

bluescrn wrote: post #57
weinzierl wrote: post #51

> Godot ended up allowing a lot of its users to be a tool to learn programming instead. This, so much. After careful deliberation I chose Godot and GDScript as a follow-up after Scratch for my kid to learn programming. Godot and GDScript are great, because: - Easy enough to pick up after Scratch. GDScript is easy to learn yet powerful enough to teach most relevant programming concepts and it even is able to make real…

As a long-time Unity user increasingly interested in alternatives, I find the choice of a non-standard language to be very offputting, moreso than the thought of returning to the pain of C++ to work with UE. Established languages generally have high-quality tools for debugging, refactoring, and more, as well as loads of libraries and code examples available, and books/tutorials/documentation. IMHO, one of Unity's bes…

Bevy is in Rust, made by a former Godot contributor.

Re: Godot 4.0 will discontinue visual scripting

#60

Post by Arelius »

adnzzzzZ wrote: post #17
subb wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Engineers wants C++, scripters and artists wants Visual Scripting. Seems like an obvious choice to make everyone happy instead of trying to find a middle ground where nobody is?

I think Godot shows there's a clear subset of people (generally indie developers) who are fine with the middle ground of a proper scripting language instead of either extreme. It's why languages like Lua are still fairly popular when the option to use it exists.

The problem is that at least until very recently, That subset of people have not been Epic's target market. UE had been targeting larger studios, and in that space, UnrealScript was largely a hindurance.
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